Culture

How Intolerant Are Trump Supporters?

After the recent South Carolina primary, some interesting exit poll data was released about Donald Trump supporters. According to the poll, 74 percent of voters surveyed are in favor of temporarily barring Muslims who are not U.S. citizens from the country, and Trump won 41 percent of that group.

This may not come as a total shock given that Trump has specifically discussed his views on the banning and deportation of Muslims from the U.S., and his supporters may just be echoing his sentiments. However, data collected from YouGov and Public Policy Polling shows Trump supporters have extreme attitudes on other issues, ones that Trump has not explicitly addressed on the campaign trail WATCH: How Powerful is Iowa?

For example, data from P.P.P. shows that one third of Trump supporters in South Carolina are in favor of prohibiting gay people from entering the United States, and one third think that Japanese internment camps in the U.S. during WWII were a good idea. Nationally, data from YouGov shows that close to 20 percent of Trump supporters surveyed disagree with Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the slaves during the Civil War.

The polls show that Trump supporters are more likely to have ethnocentric ideals than supporters of other Republican candidates, but what's important to note is that Trump has not persuaded them to adapt this way of thinking. Rather he has strategically appealed to a group who have held these ideals for a very long time.